Thursday, 18 July 2013

Hops in 1893

More hop statistics, this time courtesy of a Grantham newspaper.

I've always thought of Grantham as the evil twin of Newark, where I grew up. Not that I know Grantham particularly well. I can't have visited the place more than half a dozen times. Once was to attend a CAMRA meeting. That the pub was serving the original Barnsley Bitter should give some indication of how long ago that was.

Me and Dolores had to wait an hour or two there once on the way back from Skegness. She wasn't impressed. "It makes Newark look exciting." she said.

Sorry for wandering off there. Hops I should be talking about.

What's interesting about this set of numbers is that not just the prodduction but also the consumption of hops is given. You have to be a little careful with figures like these because most hops aren't consumed in the year they're grown, but the following year. So, for example, if 1892 has there had been a bumper crop in the UK, it might well have been self-sufficient in hops, despite growing fewer in 1893 than were used that year.

That said, the UK wasn't self-sufficient and did indeed depend on imports from, amongst others, the USA.

Hops in 1893 (zentner)

grown

consumed

Great Britain

489,735

594,187

Germany

265,189

417,596

Austria

143,466

135,694

America

418,612

320,533

total

1,696,588

Source:

Grantham Journal - Saturday 18 August 1894, page 7.

This next table shows that Germany wasn't the net importer of hops it appears to be in the first table. The 486,600 zentners uit produced on average exceeds 420,000 or so it needed for brewing. While Austria was a much bigger net exporter than it appeared.

Hop production 1896 - 1900 (zentners of 50 kg)

1896

1897

1898

1899

1900

average

Germany

510,000

473,000

436,000

581,000

433,000

486,600

UK

453,000

417,000

302,000

661,000

353,000

437,200

Austria

230,000

162,000

186,000

254,000

213,000

209,000

USA

309,000

344,000

339,000

380,000

329,000

340,200

Source:

Barth Hop Report 1910

I think I've still a few hop numbers I've not bothered you with yet. I'll try to dig them out.